Parliament imposes taxation, not the Executive

Labor’s position on the $700 million a year in income tax cuts is base political hypocrisy.

These tax cuts were dumped by Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan in May last year on the eve of Labor’s last budget.

They had been intended as a second round of minor compensation next year under original plans for the carbon price to reach $29 a tonne.

But Labor said they were not needed as an expected 0.2 per cent rise in prices was not going to happen. Labor dropped the tax cut, booked the saving in its budget but never got around to doing the paper work.

Never got around to the paperwork? That’s the legislation – the law of the land.

Now I’m happy to believe that the government is a bit frustrated – but failing to cancel a scheduled tax cut and then bleating about it isn’t a good look for a government that has low taxes in its DNA – or something.

Here is the thing; the tax cuts were not dumped by Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan – like everything else that duo (and Rudd for that matter) got up to, they simply made an announcement and then expected things to happen by magic. Like they announced a budget surplus. Alternatively, they set up an ambush for an incoming Abbott government, leaving it with the odium of repealing a tax cut.

26 Responses to Parliament imposes taxation, not the Executive

The ambushes were carefully thought out policies, like the $80 billion of hospital funding that would miraculously turn up one day when they weren’t in power, or the NDIS.
This little example is just an expression of their incompetence. Ther are plenty examples where a Minister would agree to do something, promise such and such, then simply fail to tell their department to do it. So it would never happen. And as for cabinet processes, they were obviously held to rubber stamp what had already been agreed.
So I side with incompetence.

Minded you, the only reason this is an issue for Abbott and Hockey is that the gutless worms were looking for an easy way out with respect to finding Other Peoples’ Money as they were too gutless to look for real savings.

For the better part of a year prior to the election I believed the ALP were laying a minefield for an incoming Liberal government. The events since the election have only convinced me this is the case.

By blocking everything in the senate they are sealing their own fate. Traditionally the ALP have handed out what I’ll call “social benefits” (things of all types that make people feel good). The Liberals have had to take the hard road and worry about financial responsibility. This has paved the way for the next Labor government and given them the funds to splash around.

With no cash in the kitty next time they take office, Labor will have to knuckle down fiscally. The electorate will finally see the shallowness of the ALP.

Historians will argue for years to come about which category the R-G-R actions fall into: deliberate payoff to their union masters, incompetence or deliberate lies.

Some are easy – Albo’s re-regulation of domestic shipping (straight payoff to the MUA), Ellis throwing billions at unionised childcare (United Voice). Almost everything done by KRudd and Swan was either incompetence and stupidity. The Goose will long remain the most intellectually limited individual to hold a senior ministerial position I am ever likely to see.

Anyone done by Gillard, Conroy, Roxon or Plibers was a combination of lies, hard Left ideology and deciet.

Greece got new loans (the ‘bailouts’) many times over in the last six years, and it’s looking for more. But it only got them at the price of structural reforms such as closing down the state broadcaster, ERT. These reforms were imposed by the so-called Troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. In other words, the price for bailouts amounted to loss of sovereignty. The Greek government had to follow the orders of its lenders, regardless of what the Greek people or parliament had to say. The government justifies this by saying that it had to sacrifice democracy in order to save it.

We need to get a grip on our finances a long time before we get to that stage. We have no Brussels or ECB to bail us out, sovereignty or no sovereignty.

H B Bear
#1380685, posted on July 14, 2014 at 4:14 pm
I agree with everything you say with one qualification.
You imply, by omission, that weapons grade stupidity wasn’t a driver of Plibershriek’s actions – surely she had that in spades?

I’m sure you have a different analysis, Sinc, but Phillip Hudson is one of my go-to analysts in Canberra because, like Simon Benson, he’s not lugging around a huge ego like Jabba the Hut, Paul Kelly or PVO (not to mention the fucktard activist lunatics of Fauxfacts). Hudson’s piece today, from which you have quoted, is one of the very best explanations for the insanity foisted on us by the half-mad opportunists in the Liars Party and the Senate:

THE federal budget will never get close to being fixed if the Senate forces the government to spend money it doesn’t have on tax cuts and handouts it never promised.

Amid all the Palmer drama last week and confusion about the carbon tax repeal, two big decisions were made that raise questions about whether non-government senators are going beyond any mandate they might have and if such actions make future campaign promises by the party that wins an election meaningless.

It is one thing for the Senate to hold a government to account, or to take the rough edges off a policy, but it is wrong for the house of review to try to overthrow the government’s explicit mandate.

The Senate has created an absurd position where it is forcing the government to deliver tax cuts Labor had abolished and keep payments that Tony Abbott repeatedly said he would axe.

This is entirely different to the post-election decisions to impose a deficit tax on high-income earners, which breaks a promise not to increase taxes, or the $7 GP co-payment that was never mentioned before polling day.

Labor’s position on the $700 million a year in income tax cuts is base political hypocrisy.

These tax cuts were dumped by Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan in May last year on the eve of Labor’s last budget.

They had been intended as a second round of minor compensation next year under original plans for the carbon price to reach $29 a tonne.

But Labor said they were not needed as an expected 0.2 per cent rise in prices was not going to happen. Labor dropped the tax cut, booked the saving in its budget but never got around to doing the paper work.

Last week, when the Coalition sought to put through the legislation to clean this up, Labor suddenly voted to keep the tax cuts, saying they would protect low- and middle-income families from spending cuts. It joined with the Greens and the crossbench to punch another $2 billion hole in the budget over three years.

The tax cuts are worth $1.59 a week to people earning between $25,000 and $65,000. For those on $70,000, there’s an extra $1.21 a week, while people earning more than $80,000 receive 25c a week.

What game is Labor playing? Its election costings assumed the tax cut was abolished and it now offers no saving elsewhere to pay for it.

The government is being forced to spend money it doesn’t have to deliver a promise it never made that was dropped by a former government 14 months ago.

Money bills can’t originate in the Senate but the upper house is also using a tax cut to compensate people for something that isn’t going to happen as compensation for a set of spending cuts that are being blocked.

David has a very good opinion piece up on ‘farmonline’ – A tax by any other name – delving into the very corruptible and obnoxious levy system that the Nat’s and peak farm body’s use to command and control the primary production sector.

Labor’s policy backflip is inexcusable. If there was a meeja in this country this cynical stunt would get as much coverage as the fictional wall-punch. Fact is, it was not in the forward estimates – the Libs are entitled to rely on the 2013 budget policies.

First point, Greece does not have open slather to print Euros, if they did there would be a whole lot more Euros right now. Secondly, I think they still are lending to Greece. Their government is running a deficit and has run deficits every year for more than two decades:

Someone has to be lending in order that the keep borrowing, right? I mean, that would be the accounting I’m familiar with. Let me just repeat, there has been no “austerity” in Greece. The government has never lived within its means in recent history.

I am more inclined to support the conspiracy theory on this one – surely if it was publicly announced by the then PM and Treasurer, officials would have put together the necessary legislative amendments, unless told not to by the then Government.

Announcement here, announcement there but everything they touched either never happened, was grossly over-priced, wasn’t needed in the first place or was just to fill the pockets of one union or another.

Incompetent, economic vandals.

The really sad aspect is that 56% of Aussies polled would vote to return Labor.

Stupid is what stupid does……

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